The Internet provides an unprecedented opportunity to reach millions of potential customers. Money expended for online advertising in the United States alone, is in the billions of dollars per year, and continues to increase with no end in sight. Accordingly, merchants (as well as non-merchants) are employing online advertising as a means of attracting an ever-increasing number of potential customers ranging from businesses to individuals.
Businesses have long recognized that customer profile (or demographic) information can be invaluable with respect to sales and advertising. As a result, in many cases of brick-and-mortar shopping, the merchant will at some time attempt to obtain customer information such as from a personal check, survey, by giving out free food samples along with the completion of a survey or customer feedback, and so on. Thereafter, flyers or brochures can be mailed to the user with some rudimentary level of personalization in order to portray some relationship between the merchant and the customer, the merchant hoping to develop loyalty to bring the customer back for future purchases.
The Internet and its capability of reaching millions of users, individually, provides an enormous opportunity for the provisioning of targeted content and advertising. The use of electronic-based tools (e.g., computers and cell phones) for Internet searching and shopping provide means for more convenient and qualitative obtainment of discrete amounts of personal information that is stored online at any number of locations as a user profile. For example, in many cases today, an online user is allowed to see an opening or introductory webpage of a website. However, if the user desires to view additional information of that site, they will be routed to a webpage that requests some amount personal information (e.g., name, state, age, zip code, . . . ) in order for the website vendor to gain demographics information which may be useful in more effective content distribution or advertising.
Various mechanisms are now available for obtaining information about online user activity. For example, user activities and access information can now be tracked in the form of cookies thereby providing information about the buying habits, goals, intentions, and needs large numbers of users, it then becomes possible to target groups of users, for example, based on this information alone. Additionally loggers can log most user interactivity with the site, or many different sites, and report that information back to another site for its own purposes (e.g., for sale to yet another entity).
However, the business of obtaining or tracking user information is largely a one-sided operation for the sole purposes of merchants and other business entities. Additionally, identity theft is a growing concern as unscrupulous users can now utilize the Internet to obtain personal information for illegal purposes. Still further, users are becoming intolerant of spam and other content, as reflected in legislation being addressed in many states.